The kiting community has showed up well for the Albany Beech meetings. Don't know the scope of issues that will be covered at this meeting, can anyone else comment more? I will add what I find out as well.- David

I went to this meeting last night. There was at least one other kiter there (James), quite a few dog walkers, folks from Berkeley and Albany waterfront commission, and general beach goers.

Overall, the development looks like it will be friendly to kite use. The folks from EBRPD did a baseline use study there (parked an intern out there last summer) and said that kitesurfing showed up as the number 1 water access usage of the site (not a surprise to any of us). They are planning for the upgrade of this area to maintain current usage patterns. Speaking to the planning team after the meeting it was clear they are aware of our community usage here (and at Alameda, another EBRPD site) and are overall supportive of maintaining access.

In fact, part of the funding for this project comes from the Cosco Busan oil spill settlement (http://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx? ... nline=true), which specifically calls out kitesurfing as an activity that is valued in the affected area. That's important b/c it means kitesurfing access should legally get a portion of the settlement!!!

There is one aspect that I believe we should continue to press, which is that the plans should explicitly include kite launch/landing zone as part of the renovation. Currently, the plans call for creating a defined parking lot right over the area that we all use for launch/landing. When I spoke to a planner and explained to him that we need ~100 feet of open space, he suggested adjacent space in GG Fields area just south of the area we use now. I believe that will work, but am concerned that GG Fields could take that away at their whim.

So please write EBRPD and express your concerns. Specifically, I think we need to ask for dedicated launch/landing zone that is not part of off-leash dog walkers area, and get that explicitly put into the plan.